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Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
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It actually wouldn't be strange to me. Attitudes to sex tend to be looser in more liberal places, and combine that with college age social immaturity, hjigh libidos and masses of alcohol and the recipe for sexual assault is ripe. Also as Guy says, there's *******s everywhere. -
Spent a lot of time in Sweden have we?Originally posted by Kidicious View PostPatriarchy is the worst in Sweden
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Which ****hole did you attend?Originally posted by Pedotard View PostI drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Couple more interesting articles on the Jeremiah True incident:
Did a Student's Non-PC Views on Rape Statistics Get Him Banned from Class? Maybe, Maybe Not.
Trigger warning: The ending of this story is pretty nuts.
Robby Soave|Mar. 19, 2015 5:07 pm
A male student at Reed College—a private liberal arts college in Oregon—says he was told not to return to his Humanities 110 discussion because his opinions about the prevalence of campus rape offended other people in the class. His professor, however, disputed that characterization of events in an exclusive statement to Reason.
Reached by email, the student refused to answer my questions and made the weirdest demand I've ever heard. More on that in a minute.
First, the details. According to BuzzFeed, 19-year-old Jeremiah True told his classmates that the oft-cited 1-in-5 statistic about sexual assault was an exaggeration (an opinion with which I happen to agree). This and other politically incorrect opinions led his humanities professor, Pancho Savery, to ban him from attending discussions. In an email to True, Savery told him that these opinions made his classmatess—survivors of sexual assault among them—"extremely uncomfortable." He wrote:
“There are several survivors of sexual assault in our conference, and you have made them extremely uncomfortable with what they see as not only your undermining incidents of rape, but of also placing too much emphasis on men being unfairly charged with rape,” Savery wrote to True. “The entire conference without exception, men as well as women, feel that your presence makes them uncomfortable enough that they would rather not be there if you are there, and they have said that things you have said in our conference have made them so upset that they have difficulty concentrating in other classes. I, as conference leader, have to do what is best for the well-being of the entire class, and I am therefore banning you from conference for the remainder of the semester.”
The story, first reported by BuzzFeed, was picked up at National Review and The Daily Caller. Both outlets criticized Savery for caving to hypersensitivity. NR's Kat Timpf complained that the recitation of a fact (that the 1-in-5 statistic isn't valid) could get a student in trouble:
Yes — he was banned for pointing out that a deceiving statistic was misleading. It’s based on a survey of senior undergraduates from just two schools, both large public universities — hardly a sample that represents the entire country. And it didn’t even ask the participants about “rape” in particular. Rather, it asked them if they had ever experienced any “unwanted sexual contact” — including “forced kissing” and someone “rubbing up against you in a sexual way, even if it’s over your clothes.”
Savery is known for being an ardent defender of free speech, which makes his apparent decision to remove True from class all the more baffling. While Reed College is a private institution not bound to follow the First Amendment or extend free speech rights to its students, this certainly seems like another incident where feelings-protection trumped open dialogue and violated the ethos of the law. If students can't debate cultural issues and facts in a classroom discussion, what kind of education are they getting?
All that said, I was curious about the context of True's remarks. While students should be able to speak up about controversial subjects, they aren't allowed to hijack classroom conversations and steer them wildly off track. If True was rowdy, interrupted other students, or veered off topic, that would be another matter.
Savery declined comment to BuzzFeed, but I was able to reach him via email. He confirmed that he was a "strong believer in the First Amendment," and maintained that the student's views were not the issue.
"He was not banned because of what he said but because of a series of disruptive behaviors," Savery told Reason.
I also reached True via email, and asked him whether he had been rowdy or disruptive in class. He responded by making a bizarre request. This was his email back to me:
Before I interview with you, you must agree to make "******" be the first word in your article.
I declined this ultimatum, and he declined to answer my questions. Needless to say, I've grown a lot more skeptical of True's side of the story. If I find out anything more that backs up either person's assertions about what happened, I'll update this story.
Robby Soave is a staff editor at Reason.com.
This Story About Reed College Kid Banned for Challenging Rape Stats Just Got Really Weird
by Tina Nguyen | 10:41 am, March 20th, 2015 389
The story of a college freshman being banned from a Reed College class for challenging his professor’s rape statistics may not be such a cut-and-dry example of liberalism run amok in academia.
Yesterday, BuzzFeed published an article about 19-year-old Reed student Jeremiah True, who told them that he was banned from a Humanities 110 class for repeatedly making his classmates feel uncomfortable with his contrarian views. According to True, he was banned from the class after challenging the famous statistic saying that one in five women are sexually assaulted on campus, prompting his professor, Pancho Savery, to kick him out of the lecture via email.
“Please know that this was a difficult decision for me to make and one that I have never made before; nevertheless, in light of the serious stress you have caused your classmates, I feel that I have no other choice,” Savery, a professor at the predominantly liberal college in Oregon, wrote. True defended himself by saying that he was antagonistic by nature: “I know many people aren’t comfortable with taking the stances I do, but I’m not a sheep.”
While several other publications ran with True’s allegations, Reason magazine’s Robby Soave paused for a second: He’d known Savery “for being an ardent defender of free speech, which makes his apparent decision to remove True from class all the more baffling.” And if the libertarian Reason is saying that, there is definitely something up here.
So Soave got in contact with Savery, who told him that True had been banned solely due to “a series of disruptive behaviors,” and Soave’s suspicions grew when he followed up with the student:
I also reached True via email, and asked him whether he had been rowdy or disruptive in class. He responded by making a bizarre request. This was his email back to me:
“Before I interview with you, you must agree to make “******” be the first word in your article.”
I declined this ultimatum, and he declined to answer my questions. Needless to say, I’ve grown a lot more skeptical of True’s side of the story. If I find out anything more that backs up either person’s assertions about what happened, I’ll update this story.
Well then. He sounds just lovely.
UPDATE — 10:43 a.m. ET: The Reed Quest, a student paper, dug into True’s allegations and spoke to several people in his class, who told them that True’s behavior had crossed the line from contrarianism to…we don’t even know:
According to Savery, True had made other unsettling contributions to the conference this semester, including a comment about Theocritus that “lower class people didn’t have the ability to create art” and a comment about how “we shouldn’t blame the people who were responsible for the Holocaust… because they didn’t know any better.”
Maude-Griffin says that True’s behavior started out only “a little bit patronizing” and then escalated from there over the course of the semester.
“As soon as we started discussing Aristotle he said how did not believe that people who were drunk could not be held responsible for their actions, and similarly (in his line of logic), that racists could not be blamed for their actions because they had ‘never been taught otherwise,’” Maude-Griffin recalls.
The week after True’s Theocritus comment about social class and artistic capability, Maude-Griffin says that True “began the class abruptly and loudly in an angry tone, reading the Honor Principle stating how no student should face a hostile environment, and demanding an apology of only female members of the class despite the equally strong reaction by the male ones.”
Meanwhile, True has started an online petition to get himself back in the class (“I apologize that I caused survivors of sexual assault to feel uncomfortable with my views, but the views were in no way threatening or hostile”), and has publicly responded like this:
In protest to the perceived injustices against him, True has also refused to attend his other classes, has resigned from his position on Honor Council, and has left his role in the spring faculty theater production, The Bald Soprano.
In a statement about his own character, True says, “I believe that I am an emotionally capable, intellectually gifted, cutting wit, hell of a person. I believe I have experienced more trauma and suffering and pain in my life than many of these, well frankly, middle class white girls at Reed could ever know in their lives.”
“Pancho [Savery] is the greatest teacher I have ever had,” True also said.
[Image via Jeremiah True/Facebook]
So yeah, this story is pretty nuts.No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
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What a whack job. No wonder Kid is apologising for him...
"Aha, you must have supported the Iraq war and wear underpants made out of firearms, just like every other American!" LoinburgerComment
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He's a disruptive student. You're the whackjob.
I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Between you and me, I think you're the one that has to whack them out these days...
"Aha, you must have supported the Iraq war and wear underpants made out of firearms, just like every other American!" LoinburgerComment
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Oh he's a disruptive student now?Originally posted by Kidicious View PostHe's a disruptive student. You're the whackjob.Comment
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Is he going to drop out of college...?In protest to the perceived injustices against him, True has also refused to attend his other classes, has resigned from his position on Honor Council, and has left his role in the spring faculty theater production, The Bald Soprano.
Good riddance
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Originally posted by DinoDoc View Post
This.Libraries are state sanctioned, so they're technically engaged in privateering. - Felch
I thought we're trying to have a serious discussion? It says serious in the thread title!- Al. B. SureComment
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What does it matter to you. He doesn't believe all men are taught to rape so you want him to be lynched.Originally posted by kentonio View PostI drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Why do men rape more than women do? Are men just inherently more likely to rape than women or does socialization have anything to do with it?Originally posted by Kidicious View PostComment
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Rapists have a certain profile dip****. I'm no more likely to rape someone than a feminist.Originally posted by Pedotard View PostI drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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Not really, someone could seem like a nice guy and still turn out to be a rapist.Originally posted by Kidicious View PostComment
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And a woman can be a rapist to. Why are you always so stupid?Originally posted by Pedotard View PostI drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
- Justice Brett KavanaughComment
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